Lebanese return home
Published 9:00 pm Monday, August 14, 2006
BEIRUT, Lebanon – Tens of thousands of Lebanese jammed bomb-cratered roads Monday as they returned to still-smoldering scenes of destruction after a tenuous U.N.-declared cease-fire ended 34 days of combat between Israel and Hezbollah.
Highlighting the fragility of the peace, Hezbollah guerrillas fired at least 10 Katyusha rockets that landed in southern Lebanon early today, the Israeli army said, adding that nobody was injured. The army said that none of the rockets crossed the border so Israel did not retaliate.
Although skirmishes between Israeli forces and Hezbollah left six guerrillas killed, the truce largely held through its first day.
Lines of cars snaked slowly around huge holes in the roads and ruined bridges. Many Lebanese expressed shock at finding houses and whole towns and villages flattened in more than a month of Israeli air and artillery strikes.
Jamila Marina screamed and collapsed when she saw her destroyed home in Yaroun, a mainly Christian village a few miles south of hard-hit Bint Jbail.
“Why did this happen. What have we done to deserve this!” she yelled.
Rosetta Ajaka, also just returned, found her badly damaged home had been used as a Hezbollah outpost. A rocket launcher still sat in the front garden.
Hezbollah fighters hugged each other and celebratory gunfire and fireworks erupted in Beirut as the Islamic militant group’s leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah claimed a “strategic, historic victory.”
But Israeli Prime Ehud Olmert also claimed success, saying the offensive eliminated the “state within a state” run by Hezbollah group and restored Lebanon’s sovereignty in the south.
President Bush said Monday that Hezbollah guerillas suffered a defeat at the hands of Israel and he blamed the guerrilla group for the devastation. “There’s going to be a new power in the south of Lebanon,” he said.
In northern Israel, residents emerged from bomb shelters, hopeful that the barrage of nearly 4,000 Hezbollah rockets that had rained down on towns and villages was over. Stores shuttered for weeks reopened and some people returned to the beaches in Haifa, which suffered most from guerrilla attacks.
The conflict began July 12 when Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon captured two other Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid.
The conflict left nearly 950 people dead – 791 in Lebanon and 155 on the Israeli side, according to official counts. An estimated 500,000 Israelis and about 1 million Lebanese, or a quarter of the population, were displaced in the conflict, government officials said.
A United Nations force that now has 2,000 soldiers in south Lebanon is to grow to 15,000 troops, and Lebanon’s army is to send in a 15,000-man contingent. Lebanon’s Defense Minister Elias Murr said he expected international troops to begin arriving within the next 10 days.
The cease-fire in Lebanon, if fully implemented, would be a strategic setback for Iran and Syria because it would strengthen democracy in Lebanon and stabilize the border with Israel, the U.S. State Department said Monday.
